Book

The Twilight of Fuel, The Virtue of Waste, and Why We Will Never Run Out of Energy

Peter Huber and Mark Mills

Paperback edition published April 2006

In Praise of The Bottomless Well, from the paperback edition:

FORTUNE: A few quick hits. First: best book you’ve read lately…
GATES: There’s one called The Bottomless Well, about energy, that I love.

—Fortune interview with Bill Gates

“An amazing new book. . . . The lesson of Huber and Mills is that it’s foolish to worry too much about energy, and especially foolish to conserve it. We should spend it—indeed waste it!—because the more energy we use, the more we produce. . . Burn, baby, burn!”

—Smart Money

“Here is an insight of genius: The real source of energy is human intellect. It’s infinitely renewable. It produces no emissions except a puff of CO2 when smart people say, ‘Aha!’ But there can be an energy crisis nonetheless—due to a severe intellect shortage when public policymakers think about energy.”

—P. J. O’Rourke

“This is the book for anyone who deplores ‘group think’ and demands original analysis. The authors by careful research and a clear eye destroy the six myths about energy they say constitutes today’s conventional wisdom . . . . Anyone with an open mind will never think about ‘the energy problem’ quite the same way after reading this powerful and provocative book.”

—Walter B. Wriston, former chairman, Citicorp

“For more than a century, experts have told us we were hitting the Earth’s limits. In every generation, some popular author, usually past his prime, has told us humanity was doomed. All such predictions have been bad bets . . . . Huber and Mills argue that efficiency doesn’t really save energy, because the more energy-efficient we make our appliances and cars, the more appliances and cars we buy. Huber and Mills are right about this so far.”

—Seattle Times

Huber and Mills have caused something of a sensation with the contention that the oil well is bottomless, while trying to counter claims that the planet is now drinking its final drop.”

—Capital Area Coalition

“It’s . . . entertaining to watch these guys unleash on conservationists and to consider the notion ‘that consuming energy is the essence of humanity.’”

—The Week

“This book is a fun and worthwhile antidote to the gloom often found in reports and articles about energy and electricity. Read it—and then start those engines.”

“No one with a responsibility for policy—or an interest in it—can grasp the new realities of energy and the environment without mastering the iconoclastic themes and insights of this supremely true and contrarian work.”

—George Gilder, author of Telecosm

“Huber and Mills . . . succeed in a book that is entertaining, fascinating, informative and even visionary.”

—Richard S. Lindzen, Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Sciences, MIT

“Peter Huber and Mark Mills wrote one of the best-ever books on energy technologies: The Bottomless Well: The Twilight of Fuel, the Virtue of Waste, and Why We Will Never Run Out of Energy.”

—Instrumentation, Systems, & Automation Society

The Bottomless Well, from Basic Books, January 2005
Available from Amazon.com.